Call for testers! Daphile

[joelha]

Is there an IPad compatible browser which can bring up the Daphile web page?

 

Joel

[obee]

Is there an IPad compatible browser which can bring up the Daphile web page?

 

Joel

Hi Joel,

I get exactly the same problem as you. It seems the root cause is the name resolution of local area network on iPad when connected via Wi-Fi. Here's my case:

I connect to my home network using my wi-fi only iPad (iPad 3rd gen, iOS 7.0.x). I can't load the page by entering http://daphile. For both Safari and Chrome (latest version). However, it's okay if I connect by using IP address, say http://192.168.0.200 (applies to my LAN only).

[ted_b]

Well, it's been a lost Sunday (audio-wise...no big deal, I had the time). I assumed all would go well, since I have in my possession two USB/SPDIF boxes that are both Linux friendly (no drivers, with the Hydra being also DSD128 and 384K capable, unique to SPDIF converters..I was hopeful). After 3 hours (almost 11000 seconds on the "Wait" meter) waiting for it to restart, it ends up that it simply had rebooted to Windows, yet Daphile never bothered to say anything except "wait" and count off the seconds (? why would it not say..Daphile not found, or Linux not found).

 

So, I removed the Windows SSD from the equation and booted to Daphile. After reading up on NFS and CIFS I was able to program in a few of my Synology NAS folders (I tried a local USB drive but the computer would freeze at the bios welcome screen cuz it thought it was a bootable drive). It found the Hydra USB-SPDIF but wouldn’t play anything. Music progressed but nothing from the DAC. I switched to the cheaper Matrix X-Spdif and got music to play. But once I loaded iPeng on the iPAd the entire server went away. I reloaded it but it kept coming back with no name (so iPeng couldn’t find it).

 

All in all I got about 10 min of music, but background (as I attempted to clean up and get ready for serious listening) and no idea what it sounded like. Each time I would restart Daphile the audio device would be disabled (and I'd have to manually enable it), and the name I'd give the server would be deleted. Then the server would go into lala land saying it was loading the music. Nothing after another 2 hours (Jriver imports my whole 5TB library in 15 min). The DSF tags were a mess (even though they are ID3V2 and visible in most players like JRiver).

 

Sorry....but at least in my setup this is no better than my MPD experiences from a few years (worse actually, cuz those days I at least got music playing). I'm done for now. Too bad, cuz some of you seem quite happy. I tried....also no word from Daphile.

[joelha]

Hi Joel,

I get exactly the same problem as you. It seems the root cause is the name resolution of local area network on iPad when connected via Wi-Fi. Here's my case:

I connect to my home network using my wi-fi only iPad (iPad 3rd gen, iOS 7.0.x). I can't load the page by entering http://daphile. For both Safari and Chrome (latest version). However, it's okay if I connect by using IP address, say http://192.168.0.200 (applies to my LAN only).

 

Thanks for the quick and very helpful response, obee.

 

Now, to completely confess my ignorance, how do I find my relevant IP address?

 

Also, as long as I'm asking, I seem to have a very touchy setup with the devices I have connected to my server.

 

Simply moving a USB cable from one USB port to another will make the device disappear from Daphile's devices web page.

 

Hooking up my external hard drive to a Sata port will also mess up my connections.

 

Any advice on how to fix this situation?

 

Thanks,

 

Joel

[obee]

Thanks for the quick and very helpful response, obee.

 

Now, to completely confess my ignorance, how do I find my relevant IP address?

 

Also, as long as I'm asking, I seem to have a very touchy setup with the devices I have connected to my server.

 

Simply moving a USB cable from one USB port to another will make the device disappear from Daphile's devices web page.

 

Hooking up my external hard drive to a Sata port will also mess up my connections.

 

Any advice on how to fix this situation?

 

Thanks,

 

Joel

Hi Joel,

 

To get the ip address of Daphile, you can first check in "Info" page from another browser that can load http://daphile (I guess you can load it on any other devices except iPad/iPhone). Once you get the IP address, you can load the web admin page on iPad. In long run, I suggest assigning a fixed IP address to the device that loads Daphile, that's what I am doing.

 

For USB device, when daphile is running and you unplug it and relocate it, it may not make sound because Daphile (the linux underlying) may see it as a new USB audio device, and by default, any new device will be in "pause" state so you hear no sound. You could get to the daphile web admin page and reload the "settings" page, click on "audio device" again and you shall see the new device, it won't be "disable" by default but you may need to click all the checkboxes under the USB audio device. The above is what happens to me. Your situation might vary.

 

For hooking external device to sata port, you mean to the e-sata port? I only connect via NAS (network connection) so I have no idea. I suggest you poweroff it before adding or removing any sata devices. Only USB device is hotpluggable IMO.

[obee]

Well, it's been a lost Sunday (audio-wise...no big deal, I had the time). I assumed all would go well, since I have in my possession two USB/SPDIF boxes that are both Linux friendly (no drivers, with the Hydra being also DSD128 and 384K capable, unique to SPDIF converters..I was hopeful). After 3 hours (almost 11000 seconds on the "Wait" meter) waiting for it to restart, it ends up that it simply had rebooted to Windows, yet Daphile never bothered to say anything except "wait" and count off the seconds (? why would it not say..Daphile not found, or Linux not found).

 

So, I removed the Windows SSD from the equation and booted to Daphile. After reading up on NFS and CIFS I was able to program in a few of my Synology NAS folders (I tried a local USB drive but the computer would freeze at the bios welcome screen cuz it thought it was a bootable drive). It found the Hydra USB-SPDIF but wouldn’t play anything. Music progressed but nothing from the DAC. I switched to the cheaper Matrix X-Spdif and got music to play. But once I loaded iPeng on the iPAd the entire server went away. I reloaded it but it kept coming back with no name (so iPeng couldn’t find it).

 

All in all I got about 10 min of music, but background (as I attempted to clean up and get ready for serious listening) and no idea what it sounded like. Each time I would restart Daphile the audio device would be disabled (and I'd have to manually enable it), and the name I'd give the server would be deleted. Then the server would go into lala land saying it was loading the music. Nothing after another 2 hours (Jriver imports my whole 5TB library in 15 min). The DSF tags were a mess (even though they are ID3V2 and visible in most players like JRiver).

 

Sorry....but at least in my setup this is no better than my MPD experiences from a few years (worse actually, cuz those days I at least got music playing). I'm done for now. Too bad, cuz some of you seem quite happy. I tried....also no word from Daphile.

Hi ted_b,

 

Thanks for your report. I have been using Voyage MPD for some time and I love it too. Compare to daphile, MPD in general is much lightweight, faster. And running MPD in a real time kernel gives good sound obviously. Daphile on the other hand, is running on real time kernel out of the box. And it has relative simply setup and learning curve than MPD (some of the MPDs like Volumio also provides a great UI for initial setup). To me, the biggest advantage in using daphile than MPD are two:

1. Album cover almost perfect (MPD get serious issue in loading album covers on my iPad, it works for some album but not work for others)

2. There's a "New Music" category on iPeng that allows me to see my album in another way which is quite useful to me.

However, I agree that Daphile is not good to those who are experience in working on Linux, because it's like a black box that whenever something's wrong, you can't troubleshoot easily.

[joelha]

You're amazing, obee.

Thanks again for the great information.

By the way, I come to Hong Kong often. As a matter of fact, I plan to be there Thursday - Saturday, April 10 -12. If you're around and interested, it would be great to get together. I frequent many of the audio shops there and always find them fascinating to visit.

All the best and thanks again.

Joel

[kipeta]

Update: coming up on two hours for the restart! And what's weird is that the Synology sits here in my office and doesn't seem to be being accessed. Daphile wouldn't just do this if my pc rebooted to my normal SSD (Windows Server 2012) accidentally, would it? I assume it would say Daphile not found.

Something has gone wrong with the restart. Please do hard shutdown and restart again.

 

Afterwards you'd probably better enable "Warm restart: Reboot through BIOS" setting. If it's not enabled system uses Linux kexec restart that seems to have some problems on some hardware. I'm actually considering to make it default in next version.

[kipeta]

Hi kipeta,

 

I do the following setup and it works (imperfectly):

1. Boot to Ubuntu, edit /etc/grub/40_custom

2. Refer to the /boot/grub/menu.lst in daphileBoot partition, copy the text to the 40_custom file

3. Run "grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg"

Then reboot and it shows the following error, I can press a key to continue. Then everything else are okay.

 

 

Do you have any idea what's wrong with my setup?

Also, do I need to redo the above setup (as it is manual override) each time after firmware upgrade?

Thanks a lot.

 

Try following:

Boot to Ubuntu.

Edit /etc/grub.d/44_daphile:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Adding Daphile menu entry." >&2
exec tail -n +4 $0

menuentry "Daphile" {
   set root=(hd1,msdos1)
   linux /boot/fw1403140824/kernel boot_uuid=d4a32faf-3bc3-4615-819c-4622824fa30a data_uuid=cd064d6f-2d50-49ef-93e3-098e04d12322 daphile=fw1403140824 video=vesafb:mtrr:3,ywrap vga=788 loglevel=0 panic=1 acpi=force console=tty2 processor.max_cstate=1
}

Replace proper values (you can get them from the DaphileBoot partition /boot/grub/menu.lst) for:

• set root=
  
• fw versions at both kernel path and daphile=
  
• boot_uuid and data_uuid
  

 

Remember to run update-grub.

 

This worked on my Ubuntu laptop. Grub2 booted Daphile from USB flash.

[kipeta]

May I know what's the battery meter suppose for? I am running Daphile on my laptop, when I unplug the AC power, the battery icon keeps blinking, and there is a pop up message on every click warning me that the power may run out anytime. In fact, my battery still ok for say one hour more.

 

Should it be a power meter showing the (estimated) remaining time for running or percentage? But it somehow doesn't work on my laptop?

There is a bug that has been fixed in pre-release. It's available at: http://www.daphile.com/tmp.4LbPU6aKEl

 

You can update to pre-release if you go to http://daphile/cgi-bin/Devel and insert the download link of the pre-release version (eg. http://www.daphile.com/tmp.4LbPU6aKEl/daphile-14.03-b131548-x86_64.iso) to input field besides the Install button and press Install.

 

BTW. Pre-release has also option to force the CD drive read speed.

[kipeta]

Ok guys got a new NAS, Synology ds213j. Having trouble getting Daphile to recognize it. Any tips?

 

Preliminary wiki has some tips for you: Storage - Daphile Wiki

[kipeta]

Hi Joel,

I get exactly the same problem as you. It seems the root cause is the name resolution of local area network on iPad when connected via Wi-Fi. Here's my case:

I connect to my home network using my wi-fi only iPad (iPad 3rd gen, iOS 7.0.x). I can't load the page by entering http://daphile. For both Safari and Chrome (latest version). However, it's okay if I connect by using IP address, say http://192.168.0.200 (applies to my LAN only).

 

With iOS browsers you should be able to use http://daphile.local address.

[obee]

There is a bug that has been fixed in pre-release. It's available at: Index of /tmp.4LbPU6aKEl

 

You can update to pre-release if you go to http://daphile/cgi-bin/Devel and insert the download link of the pre-release version (eg. http://www.daphile.com/tmp.4LbPU6aKEl/daphile-14.03-b131548-x86_64.iso) to input field besides the Install button and press Install.

 

BTW. Pre-release has also option to force the CD drive read speed.

Thanks kipeta, I will wait for official release as I am not in hurry.

[ted_b]

Kipeta,

Thanks for the involvement here. I am willing to try this again. I am going to reformat the USB thumb drive and start over. Now that I know the nomenclature to attach via NFS my Synology folders the hard part is done.

 

Question: although my Chord Qute EX DAC's USB input does not seem to be Linux friendly (come up "dummy" at 48khz, and no Linux driver seems to exist) my two USB-SPDIF boxes are. I am most interest in getting the Audiobyte Hydra-X+ working cuz it does 384k and DSD128 (both of which my DAC can handle). The aborted attempt yesterday included Daphile recognizing the Audiobyte USB box, showing it at 384k max, etc. No problem...except that it seemed to be passing no signal to the DAC. The Audiobyte showed a USB signal, music was advancing on the web interface, time was elapsing, but my DAC was unaffected. Why would that be? And did it have anything to do with the checkboxes of hw, 1 and hw,0 as "mixers"? My lesser-but-still-good Matrix X-SPDIF was also recognized but everytime I went to it on the web interface it was reset to "disabled". I did get it to play for a few minutes but did something else to muck up the install before I got a chance to hear it seriously.

[joelha]

Ted,

Just a thought but, given the effort involved, would it make sense to just put some files in to your flash drive's /music folder and hear what Daphile sounds like first?

Seems hardly worth the time to get your whole library connected if the end result isn't to your liking.

Again, just a thought.

Good luck.

Joel

[ted_b]

Joel,

Good idea. Yes, I'll likely do that this time, but large NAS access and loading is important to me (as an overall eval). Kinda like Jplay Mini..maybe it sounds a little better but access and GUI is horrible and not worth the ever so slight tradeoff.

 

I can't remember, the settings had a default folder structure for music on the Daphile's flash drive. Was it simply /Music?

[joelha]

Yes, Ted, it's just /music.

 

Joel

[obee]

Guys, tonight I just upgraded my Daphile PC to a mATX broad using i3 CPU (35W TDP). The response time is much improved compare to when I was using my 2008 c2d ULV notebook. I have bought a i7 CPU (also 35W TDP) but I put it in my desktop PC.

Now kexec is supported so the reboot time is much shorten to less than 25 seconds between no music to music resumes.

[Holzohr]

Is there an IPad compatible browser which can bring up the Daphile web page?

Guys, I use the Safari browser for Daphile. You can add the Daphile web page to your home screen. To my surprise it has the nice Daphile icon.

 

 

 

@Ted, could you sort out the cifs path? Here you can see the path(s) to my Synology music folders.

username@NAS_ip_Address:/music/

 

 

Mario

[joelha]

Holzohr,

What link or website do you save in order to keep the Daphile page as a favorite?

Wouldn't the IP address have to be static?

Thanks for the information.

Joel

[ted_b]

Mario,

Looks like your cifs is fine (green check marks). I use NFS but either way works.

[Holzohr]

Holzohr,

What link or website do you save in order to keep the Daphile page as a favorite?

Wouldn't the IP address have to be static?

Joel,

you can give Daphile a static ip address now (under Networking/Configure IP). Before Daphile always got the same ip address by my router's DHCP-server.

 

 

 

I use NFS but either way works.

Ted, to me... setting the NFS path seemed to be more difficult. I am not really a Linux guy. Good to have NFS and cifs.

[kipeta]

Joel,

Good idea. Yes, I'll likely do that this time, but large NAS access and loading is important to me (as an overall eval). Kinda like Jplay Mini..maybe it sounds a little better but access and GUI is horrible and not worth the ever so slight tradeoff.

 

I can't remember, the settings had a default folder structure for music on the Daphile's flash drive. Was it simply /Music?

 

If you are running Daphile from the USB flash that's created with unetbootin or similar it will not support very large music libraries. That kind of Daphile setup is meant to be used as an installation media or for quick testing. It reserves by default only 128MB (you can set the size larger with unetbootin "Space used to preserve..." parameter) space for storing the internal media server databases, etc... It's not enough for large libraries and there will be some unexpected problem (media server crash most certainly) when the storage space runs empty.

 

So I really would recommend to store some music on flash and do the initial testing with that. And for more serious usage I strongly recommend to make full installation. That's done by using the unetbootin created flash and the web UI at Settings -> System Firmware. You will need another empty disk (USB flash, HDD or SSD) for that. It really needs to be empty, i.e. all partitions deleted manually. This inconvenience is due to system security. I didn't want to implement a system where you could accidentally (or intentionally) delete/overwrite existing data.

[kipeta]

Kipeta,

Thanks for the involvement here. I am willing to try this again. I am going to reformat the USB thumb drive and start over. Now that I know the nomenclature to attach via NFS my Synology folders the hard part is done.

 

Question: although my Chord Qute EX DAC's USB input does not seem to be Linux friendly (come up "dummy" at 48khz, and no Linux driver seems to exist) my two USB-SPDIF boxes are. I am most interest in getting the Audiobyte Hydra-X+ working cuz it does 384k and DSD128 (both of which my DAC can handle). The aborted attempt yesterday included Daphile recognizing the Audiobyte USB box, showing it at 384k max, etc. No problem...except that it seemed to be passing no signal to the DAC. The Audiobyte showed a USB signal, music was advancing on the web interface, time was elapsing, but my DAC was unaffected. Why would that be? And did it have anything to do with the checkboxes of hw, 1 and hw,0 as "mixers"? My lesser-but-still-good Matrix X-SPDIF was also recognized but everytime I went to it on the web interface it was reset to "disabled". I did get it to play for a few minutes but did something else to muck up the install before I got a chance to hear it seriously.

 

You could contact me via the form at www.daphile.com and we could continue with email exchange.

 

Please send also the output from address: http://daphile/cgi-bin/audioinfo.cgi

 

And I could also recommend to try the latest pre-release that's available at: http://www.daphile.com/tmp.4LbPU6aKEl/

[russtafarian]

Ted, I hope you get this working well enough to give it a shot. I'm sold on Daphile as an every-day music server solution.

 

I'm a Linux no-nothing, so it took me some trial and error to get Daphile properly installed onto the drive of an old netbook. But since I got it working, I haven't looked back. It recognizes the Benchmark DAC2 with no problem. I have 3TB of stereo files connected via USB drive and Daphile indexed and plays them all back without a problem. Using squeezelite, I get no inter-track noise on DSD files. I have tweaked metadata on a few files to make them a little more LMS/Daphile friendly.

 

The only reason I would go back to Jriver is if I wanted to use DSP/plug-in stuff or needed on-the-fly DSD to PCM conversion for a non-DSD DAC.

 

Russ